2019-2020 Academic Catalog 
    
    Mar 29, 2024  
2019-2020 Academic Catalog [Archived Catalog]

HIST 350 - The History of Western Medicine from Plague to Penicillin


Credits: Three (3)
What has it meant to be “sick” throughout history? Who were physicians and nurses, how were they trained, and what roles did they have in western society? When did we as a species turn away from magical understandings of illness, toward a modern scientific understanding of disease and infection?

This class seeks to answer these questions by examining an array of first-hand stories, anatomical designs, medical case studies, and cultural histories of medicine. We will explore such themes as: changes in our understanding of sexual difference from the Greeks to the present, the emergence of the modern hospital, the development of germ theory, and the evolution of the physician’s, the nurse’s, and the midwife’s role in western society from the middle ages to the twentieth century. [P, M; W; I]
General Education Area: Social Science